Abstract
A Late Proterozoic ophiolite in the South Carpathian-Balkan region has a total surface-outcrop area of 400 km2. It is a complete ophiolitic section that includes mid-ocean ridge basalts, indicating that it was formed in a large ocean. The oceanic crust is unconformably overlain by an ensimatic island arc of Cambrian age. The ophiolite-island-arc assemblage was obducted over the Moesian platform during Early Ordovician time. Both sequences are now incorporated in a continental block as a result of intracontinental convergence, which took place in Variscan time. The ophiolite is situated along the Thracian suture, which divides the Moesian platform and the Thracian continental fragment. This suture is part of a larger one, referred to as the South European suture, that is situated between the Thracian massif and the Adriatic plate to the southwest and the Moesian platform, Bohemian, and Central French massif to the northeast.
